European Union really loves me! So it said, "hey you look depressed, wanna travel a little bit? Of course, I'm paying". So an Italian documentary director decided to form a project with my university and we'll participate in three workshops in Europe.

And the first-one was on Italy. They made all the arrangements and sent us the address where we would stay. It is a little town outside of Rome, a very historical-one. So we said, "cool". But the address they gave was of an old monastery, so we though "Ok, so there are a lot of B&B's in the area, we'll be staying in one near the monastery". Well, guess again, we stayed in the monastery!!!! (Did I mention that EU really really loves me?)

The town's name is Fara Sabina (or Fara in Sabina), it is small, very well protected, has a lot of history and has absolutely nothing in it, except for the monastery and an experimental theater. (It only had one grocery store and it was closed for 3 days, so all the participants ran out of cigarettes, awful!)

The monastery is Franciscan monastery and as the tradition goes, the nuns don't speak, don't eat any luxury food, don't use the heating system! They are still nuns living in the monastery, and their story is quiet interesting actually. When Italy adopted secularism, they closed all the monasteries. But the nuns of Fara Sabina being rich aristocrats' daugthers, they made a deal with the government, bought the monastery. The rule goes that they can only be less than 10 nuns in the monastery or they will count as a cult and be closed.